


Visions of Gideon

by apollos



Category: South Park
Genre: Inspired by Call Me By Your Name, Italy, M/M, Sexuality Crisis, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 06:43:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18751111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollos/pseuds/apollos
Summary: A certain movie and a certain actor inspire a series of events over the course of two days in Stan's life.





	Visions of Gideon

**Author's Note:**

> not putting an accent mark over timchim's second e is not laziness but instead rebellion

"You know Timothee Chalamet!" Wendy says, crouching by the television in Stan's basement. She's in the process of perusing her Amazon Prime Video to find the movie they're about to watch on her laptop, hooked up via HDMI cord. "Remember when we went and saw Lady Bird?"

Stan remembers, but he'd fallen asleep fifteen minutes in. It had been a Saturday matinee and he was exhausted from the game the night previous. Though he generally likes so-called chick flicks, he had felt, from the first fifteen minutes of that movie, that it was communicating an exclusively female experience. So he'd fallen asleep in the reclining movie seat, holding Wendy's hand, his grip getting progressively looser.

Wendy sighs; Stan's lack of response is enough response. "He's the one that Nick Kroll said looked like a gas station attendant at the Spirit Awards." She's found the movie— _Call Me By Your Name._ Not available to stream, so she rents it, unthinkingly. She must really want to watch it.

"Oh, okay. That was funny. He did look like a gas station attendant."

Wendy smiles at him. "Captions on?" she asks, uselessly. She likes having the captions on, so they always watch with the captions on. "You know, some of this movie isn't in English."

"Oh?" Stan asks as she clicks the play button and then makes her way back to the couch.

"Yeah. Not a lot, though." She snuggles in beside him, taking one of his hands to hold in both of hers. As is her usual habit, she runs her fingers over his calluses; the one on his thumb from playing guitar, the other ones from handling a football and never remembering to use the hand cream she gave him.

The first scene of the movie, indeed, features the characters not speaking English. It's helpfully subtitled. "That's this Timothee guy?" he asks. He's lounging on a twin bed, a scrawny wisp of a twenty-something playing a teenage boy.

"Yes," Wendy says. "Shh."

Stan likes to talk during movies, sometimes, but Wendy doesn't. She says it lessens the experience. Stan sees movies as primarily a social event, not an artistic one; if it were up to him, they'd watch a Will Ferrell comedy he'd seen a thousand times before, or maybe an early Adam Sandler from before his movies (or maybe just Stan) got old. Wendy and Kyle both label his taste in movies as pedestrian, and Stan always suggest they watch these artsy movies together, but Wendy and Kyle generally don't like spending time together. They get awkward, feisty. Their personalities are too similar, maybe. Thinking of this, and with the lack of action on screen, Stan starts to feel sleepy. Wendy squeezes his hand, hard.

He realizes, perhaps too slowly, what this movie is about, exactly. Though the more obscure artistic references go over his head, he likes the scenery shots, the constant moving golden light, and the soundtrack, the classical backing; he likes the characters playing piano and floating between languages effortlessly; he likes the relationship between Elio and his parents; he feels an odd pull in his gut when Elio and Oliver start to circle each other, drift into each other's space. The cagey way Elio approaches him, cautious and narrow-eyed, reminds him of Kyle. It's not that Kyle  _looks like_ Tiomothee Chalamet—or maybe he does, a little, in that vague way where you can't point out the exact features that are comparable but something about them all together create that likeness—but the cat-like grace, the quick movements, the snappy responses—Stan sees Kyle. He assumes that that's why, as the movie progresses the sexual and emotional relationship, he feels progressively uncomfortable. Beside him, Wendy sighs at the romantic scenes and holds him more closely, but Stan feels hot and itchy, wants to get away from her and turn the movie off. He really would have been more comfortable with a comedy.

He cannot help but say, "This is ridiculous," when they get to the scene featuring the peach. Stan has seen the memes about it online but had not made the connection until now. The movie handles it tactfully, but the camera lingers, taking its time, as Elio caresses the peach, dips his finger into its curvature. And then Oliver, holding the soiled fruit, literally and metaphorically above Elio's head. Innocence and perversion.

"That's love," Wendy says.

Stan crinkles his nose, glad when the scene ends.

He feels an increasing sense of dread as he realizes how this movie will conclude. He tenses when they're on the bus, heading to their final vacation together; he feels angry, betrayed. He resents Oliver for leaving Elio, who so clearly needs him. A pessimist and a romantic all at once, the ending satisfies Stan, in the way that it makes his heart break. They watch Timothee Chalamet watching the fire for the entirety of the Sufjan Stevens song, Wendy sniffling and wiping at her eyes, Stan stone-faced, stone-stomached. Is it a video? Well, is it? Sufjan Stevens, of course, does not answer the question.

"So?" Wendy asks after a few minutes.

"It was sad," Stan says. "You know I don't like sad movies."

"I thought you would like this one," she says. She stands up and goes to her laptop. She does not comment further. "Do you want to watch another movie?"

"No," Stan says. "Will you come here?"

"Oh, Stan." Wendy disconnects the HDMI cord and closes the lid of her laptop. Before she leaves, she presses the button behind the television, turning it off. The only light in the basement is a single exposed bulb, burning towards the back, and though it's around three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, it now feels quite like night. Stan opens his arms and spreads his legs, bringing Wendy into his lap. He kisses the top of her head. She smells like her shampoo, like coconut. Beachy.

"Did you like it, though?" she asks again, pulling back to study his face. She has a few freckles across the bridge of her nose; it's the summer, between their junior and senior year of high school. They're seventeen, the same age as Elio in that movie. Stan tries not to think about that. He didn't like the age difference either, really. Timothee Chalamet, so small and delicate, and Armie Hammer, this towering monument to masculinity. The more he thinks about it, the more he comes to hate Oliver.

"I guess," Stan says. "It's just—I don't know, it felt sort of pointless, you know? You root for them, and then at the end, it's sad, and I guess the moral is that we're supposed to learn, from that sadness? I liked that part, I think."

Wendy kisses the tip of his nose. "I  _told_ you," she says again, softly. Stan meets her mouth, wanting to kiss her, but more than that, to end this conversation.

As is usual when they watch movies together on a hazy summer afternoon, they have sex afterwards, long, lazy and laughingly. They always come to Stan's house; his father practically encourages them to have sex, having given Stan his first box of condoms at age fourteen. If it bothers his mother more, Stan doesn't know. They don't talk about it. Afterwards, holding Wendy and staring at the ceiling, Stan thinks about the relationship between Elio and his mother. The way he would lay his head in her lap. That's more Kyle-like. He never grew out of a childhood closeness to his parents, though he only shows it in front of those he's most comfortable with, like Stan. Stan hugs his parents solely during tragedies or tragedy-like events.

"I should get going," Wendy says eventually, after a prolonged period of laying together comfortably. She sits up and picks her shirt and shorts up from the floor. "I made plans with Bebe. What are you doing for the rest of the day?"

"What time is it?"

Wendy checks her phone, found in the pocket of her shorts. "Four."

"I guess I'll see what Kyle's up to," Stan says.

Wendy kisses his forehead and disconnects her laptop, putting it in the backpack she'd carried over. Stan doesn't move, just watches her. Something feels off, wrong, foggy, and he can't stop thinking about the movie. It's like the feeling after a sour nap. He listens to the sound of Wendy's footsteps up the stairs, and when he thinks she's gone, he rises from the couch. Feeling generally disconnected from his body, he makes his way back to his room.

His father intercepts him. "Wendy left?" he asks.

"Yeah," Stan says. "She had plans with Bebe."

Randy shakes his head, as if having plans with her friends is a personal affront against Stan on Wendy's part, and Stan laughs a nervous little laugh. He moves past Randy.

Once in his room he sits in his bed and stares at his hands. Scenes from the movie keep flashing through his head—the volleyball scene, Oliver rubbing Elio's shoulder; the scene where they're by the lake and Elio grabs Oliver's crotch; when Elio pukes on a cobblestone street and Oliver hovers over him, protectively. Then, of course, the sad scenes. Stan squeezes his eyes shut. Elio is Jewish, he remembers, suddenly. Would Kyle like this movie? He likes artsy movies, but mostly when he's with Stan they watch the juvenile boyish shit that causes Wendy to turn up her nose. Fart jokes and physical comedy and the like. Stan loves that Kyle, despite being so  _academic_ , still likes these things, and he likes when they're doing nothing on a weekend but watching old Terrance and Phillip reruns and eating hastily microwaved four-ingredient nachos. He always fears Kyle will outgrow him, and yet he still hasn't.

Stan's eyes pop back open and he reaches for his laptop, waiting for him on his bedside table. The last tab he'd been looking at were Broncos scores from the 80s, but he can't remember why. He and Kenny had gotten high last night; they were watching highlight videos on YouTube, maybe? Stan opens another YouTube tab and types in  _timothy shalamay,_ of course spelling the name wrong, but YouTube corrects him. He clicks on an hour-long interview with Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer about filming  _Call Me By Your Name_.

He finds that, when not inhabiting his role as Elio, Timothee Chalamet resembles Kyle less. He still hints, physically, at a likeness, but the mannerisms were really what made it. The real Timothee Chalamet is simultaneously too self-aware and too unconsciously giggly. Stan leaves the video in one tab running as background noise and opens up another, googling the name of the movie. He reads a few reviews, which all laud the film. He discovers that it was originally a book, and he reads the Wikipedia page for that, as well. He discovers the possibility of a sequel to the film; he discovers the book extended on from what they saw, and that indeed, Elio and Oliver were never to reconcile. Lost and confused as to why he started this research in the first place, Stan shuts his laptop and puts it back on the beside table. He lays down on his bed, hands laced on his stomach.

Eyes heavy and body warm, he falls into a thin sun-soaked summer nap. Unsure if he's sleeping or just thinking very deeply, scenes from the movie play on repeat in his head, and in this state he finds his resentment of Oliver, of Armie Hammer's character, building and building and turning toxic in his stomach. He should have done something, Stan thinks. They could have made it work. He—Stan—would have made it work. They were in Italy, a place of unbelievably freedom, unbelievably beauty, rich in history and art, dripping in romance—but of course that can't last. Good things can't last. There was no reason Oliver had to go home and get married—to please his family? But part of life is starting a new family, on your own, with a chosen person. It was Italy, Stan keeps thinking. Italy, not America. They could have been safe there, hidden among the citrus and the cypress trees, eating long lunches and digging broken bits of statues from the sand. Elio clearly wanted that life; Oliver clearly wanted that life; and if two people clearly want something, and if that something is each other, how could—how could they just  _let go_?

Stan is experiencing the strangest of phenomena, an aesthetic denouement, a reaction to art that crushes you. A pleasant ache, in the middle of his chest; the complete consumption of the soul. A sort of yearning for something you cannot not quite quantify or qualify. Stan cannot quantify or qualify these feelings; all he knows is that he yearns and he aches, yearns and aches pleasantly but decisively, and yearns and aches for something he cannot identify. At just seventeen, shuffling through the last true dregs of adolescence, Stan has not the maturity to come to a cognizant resolution right away. All he can do is live, to let these feelings circulate and percolate.

He wakes from this restless sleep still with the movie heavy in his mind. In the veil between consciousness and unconsciousness, in his most unguarded moments, he realizes: he wants what the movie portrayed. He wants a love that motivates you to eat somebody's come out of a peach and call them by your name. He does not want to be Elio. He wants to be Oliver, strong-shouldered and smart, and he wants to do right by Elio, slender and sharp-sighted.

This confuses him thoroughly. He peels his sweaty body off the bed and checks the time; he'll be called down for dinner soon. He places his elbows on his knees and his heads in his hands. He has Wendy, of course. He's had her for so long, he cannot imagine life without her. He enjoys the time they spend together well enough, and he thinks she's smart, thinks she's pretty, thinks she's funny.  _But_ —

His mother's voice breaks his thoughts.

Dinner is disappointing if only because Stan's stuck on the food scenes in  _Call Me By Your Name_  and his mother's pork chops and mashed sweet potatoes don't call to mind northern Italy. He eats them anyway and gets seconds, talking about an incident involving Randy's boss mishandling samples and tainting a two-year-long project. "At least it wasn't me," Randy says to unanimous agreement. Shelly is not at home but in Rhode Island, spending the latter half of her summer there with her boyfriend's family before resuming study at Conn College.

After dinner Stan takes Sparky on a walk. The weather is cool enough that Sparky can handle it, Stan still testing the pavement with the back of his hand. Sparky is thirteen years old at this point and arthritic. It breaks Stan's heart every time he tries to bring Stan a ball with which to play fetch, Stan knowing he can't let Sparky get overheated. Tonight, though, Sparky seems to be in good spirits and Stan is enjoying the evening, so they venture out of Stan's neighborhood, walking out to one of the many lesser developed part of South Park.

It's not yet fully dark, but the streetlamps have been lit, the stars splayed across the sky. Cicada buzz in a distant way, like a fan running at night in your room, and the air smells sweet and crisp, rolling off the mountains. It's a different beauty than the golden days in Italy, but a beauty Stan knows and loves nonetheless. Sparky sniffs some trees and marks a few fire hydrants, looking at Stan as if expecting praise.

"That's a good boy," Stan says. "You're so good, Sparky. The best dog ever. What am I going to do when you're gone? Or when I'm gone? Do you promise not to die on me when I'm away?"

The dog does not respond but Stan keeps talking, lowering his voice so as not to be overheard through any open windows. "I don't know what to do, Sparky," he continues on. An errant bird has gotten Sparky's attention. Stan folds the leash back some to keep him closer. "I've got to go to college, you know? I hope I get scouted, but I'm probably not good enough. Wendy has this whole list, and Kyle, too, and. I don't want to leave them. Shelly didn't care, 'cause she didn't have a lot of friends, but I do care."

Sparky starts to pant, and Stan realizes he's probably gone too far from home. They're now on a long stretch of empty road, so he sits on the curb beneath a streetlamp. Sparky noses his knees apart and plops between Stan's legs. Stan scratches his head and keeps talking. "That movie, Jesus. What did Wendy expect? I think that's why I'm in a funk. It was just so  _sad_ , Sparky. You should be glad you're not a human, 'cause human men, they don't get what they want when they love other men, huh? Then again, you don't have any balls, so maybe you wouldn't care." Stan sighs, running his hand down Sparky's back, feeling the bristly fur. "It's more than just balls, though," he says, feeling insane but also as if he's imparting some important wisdom upon his geriatric gay dog. "It's love, too."

They sit together for a little bit longer, Stan stroking Sparky and thinking. Thinking about college, and not wanting to leave the next year, and about  _Call Me By Your Name_. That effortless intelligence, Stan thinks—Wendy has that, and Kyle has that, but Stan doesn't. Stan likes music and art and all that well enough, but he would be happier to lay by a pool without a book, dozing and dreaming on his own, than with one. It doesn't matter if he physically leaves Wendy and Kyle first. They'll realize this about him, sooner or later, and leave him in all other aspects.

"I went and made myself all sad, Sparky." Stan stands back up and tugs on the leash. "You good to go?"

Sparky barks, once, and Stan takes that as a sign that he's regained enough energy to head back. They do, a breeze picking up Stan's shirt and bringing goosebumps to his skin. Once home, Stan throws away the bag he'd brought with him to pick up after Sparky and then washes his hands. Sparky plods into the living room and falls asleep at Randy's feet. He and Sharon are watching some reality programming on the Discovery channel, Sharon muttering at intervals about how fake everything seems, Randy defending it.

It's still early and Stan could go and see Kyle, but he'd rather be alone. He goes up to his room and opens his laptop again, resuming his browsing of  _Call Me By Your Name_ information. That turns into reading about Timothee Chalamet, and that turns into opening up a Google Images search of pictures of Timothee Chalamet. Stan peers at the actor's face, feeling a strange sort of embarrassment, as if he's doing something he's not supposed to. If his face were longer, his nose wider, his skin whiter, his hair red—there are angles of him looking down that really look like Kyle—he's sort of pretty, really. Timothee Chalamet, not Kyle. Stan refines the search, adds  _call me by your name_ to the end.

It would have been hot during the day, especially in a stone house that seemed to have no air conditioning, though the windows were always open. It would have been cooler at night, and Stan thinks of the scene where they meet on the balcony, shadowed and lit by moonlight, swaying into one another. He thinks of Oliver holding Elio's foot in the pantry, soothing him. Stan starts to get hard. He tells himself it's the comfort—he tells himself it's providing for somebody—he tells himself it's these things as he reaches into his pants and holds his cock, not stroking yet, just holding it, feeling it rise. Timothee Chalamet remains on the screen, and Stan is looking at the sloped line of his shoulders, peach scene, volleyball scene, pantry scene, all playing on a repeat in his head.

When he comes it depresses him.

He throws himself into a premature and fitful sleep. Stan sleeps a lot, on principle, constantly exhausted from playing football and growing, and though by the time the morning comes he's in bed for about twelve hours he feels like he wakes up every five minutes. He tosses and turns, body hot and swollen like he's come down with a fever. Elio and Oliver and snippets of dialogue float through his head. At random intervals he remembers Wendy, always with surprise, as if he'd forgotten her place in his life.

He wakes too early and putters around his house with a heaviness in his head that's not quite a headache. He showers, he brushes his teeth, he eats breakfast. He looks in the department of the refrigerator in which they keep their fruit and finds that there's no peaches. He'd read online the night before that nearly everybody involved with the production had tried the peach thing on their own, to satisfying results, and he guesses he'll have to take their word for it. He cannot imagine the humiliation of going to the store and buying a peach to ejaculate into, certain that everybody would figure out what he was doing. He doesn't know what he would do with the peach afterwards, either. He doesn't even like to eat them.

Around ten in the morning he grows tired of half-watching random shit on TV and heads next door. The Broflovskis, save Ike, are all early risers, anyway.

Directed by Sheila, Stan finds Kyle laying on a blanket in the grass in the backyard, a Hawthorne novel held in one hand above his head, his other hand playing with a loose thread in the blanket. He's wearing large sunglasses and short shorts, and at first the resemblance to Timothee Chalamet, to Elio, is so striking that it takes the wind out of Stan's lungs. It brings back memories that cause heat to crawl up from Stan's collar along his neck. Then Kyle realizes he's being watched and sits up, putting his book down.

"Hey," Kyle says, scrunching his nose as he talks. He's gotten in the habit of doing that lately, and on anybody else Stan would find it incredibly annoying. "What's up?"

"Just came to see what you're doing," Stan says. He sits down on the blanket, too.

"I was reading," Kyle says, "or at least trying to. I don't know what I thought. I don't like the sun, or the bugs. It's all too distracting, and Hawthorne is a slog to begin with."

"I bet he is." Stan looks at the book Kyle discarded. There's a portrait of a woman on the cover, staring at him with eyes that seem almost pleading. She has her hair wrapped in a white dress. Looking at her feels invasive, so Stan looks away, at the lightly freckled back of Kyle's wrists.

"Here, I'll read some for you." Kyle picks the book up and smooths out the pages that had gotten caught beneath the spine before reading. " _They entered the nave. The interior of the church was of moderate compass, but of good architecture, with a vaulted roof over the nave, and a row of dusky chapels on either side of it, instead of the customary side-aisles._ And then he goes on!"

"Wow," Stan says, meaning it. "What's the book about?"

"Some people fucking around in Italy in the 1800s." Kyle puts the book back down, marking his spot with an old receipt as a makeshift bookmark. He flops on the blanket again. Without thinking, Stan lays down, too. It's really too small for two boys their age and size, and they're tight together, skin against skin. Stan has never thought about this before, but he's suddenly aware, aware of the feeling of Kyle's leg hair brushing against Stan's own and the slight roughness of his elbow.

"I want to go swimming," Stan announces, thinking of the scene in  _Call Me By Your Name_  when they're by the pool. There's no idyllic small stone-rimmed Italian pool in South Park, but there  _is_ Kyle, so compromises can be made.

"Right now?"

"Maybe. I don't know."

"Well, I guess we can go. Don't mention it to my mom, though. She'll want me to take Ike."

Stan gets up off the blanket and offers a hand to Kyle to help him up, who takes it. Kyle's hand is warm but dry in Stan's. He has long, knobby fingers, stretched and strengthened by playing the piano since middle school. He talks constantly about how he's missed any chance at greatness for starting too late, but Stan likes to listen to him play. That was another thing, that sparked the resemblance between Elio and Kyle—Stan knows Sheila makes Kyle play the piano for extended family, sometimes. Kyle always complains about it afterwards, but Stan thinks he likes it, just a little bit.

They go to Stark's Pond. Neither of them like the community pool in South Park, which tends to be overrun with children and which Kyle labels as  _unhygienic._ "I just ignore what's in the pond," he's said when Stan has questioned him about how hygienic he finds it. "Besides, I've been doing this since I was a kid. I've built up an immunity."

During the summer the town puts up a makeshift diving float. They take turns jumping off it, holding their noses shut and laughing. They wade and splash each other, challenge each other to swimming races. Kyle's on the swim team; Stan's strong from football; the races are even, fun. They come out equal. The sun beats down on the surface of the water, rippling slightly, a deep, pure blue, untouched by pollution. Other families lounge about in their own little bubbles, picnicking or swimming, a pair of teenage girls paddeboarding on the other side of the lake, but Stan and Kyle are blissful in their bubble. Stan notices that as a perk of being a teenage boy: people tend to assume that you are rowdy, trouble, and they avoid you.

Eventually Kyle must reapply his sunscreen, so they crawl onto the shore, laying on towels they'd brought from Kyle's house. "You should do this, too," Kyle says while he's spraying sunscreen onto his arms. Stan's trying not to stare.

"I don't need it." Stan moves his legs. Kyle looks at them. Stan's skin tans into a sort of golden-brown, though he's more prone to acne than Kyle.

"Just because you tan and don't burn," Kyle says, narrowing his eyes at Stan, "does not make you invincible to skin cancer."

"I need all the sun while I can get it."

"I suppose that's true. Still, Stan—please, put some on, for me?" Kyle cocks his head and extends the bottle to Stan, an offering. It's the spray kind, not the cream kind, and a strong SPF.

Stan takes it, shrugging his shoulders. "Do my back?" he asks.

"Alright." Kyle says this as if it's a huge burden, but he's smiling.

Stan sprays the front of his body sloppily, still not really caring, and then stands, handing the bottle back to Kyle. He shivers when the coldness hits his back, aware of the contrast between the heat of Kyle's body and the cold of the sunscreen—why is he standing so close? Then he's pushing Stan, who stumbles ankle-deep in the water, Kyle still pushing him. They tumble in together, Kyle laughing as he wraps his arms around Stan's shoulder, Stan now up to his chest and Kyle in a kind of piggy back. Stan shakes Kyle free and sends him into the water, holding him under for just a second.

"Asshole!" Kyle laughs as he comes up.

"I'm the asshole?" Stan shouts over the sound of the water splashing around them as they tussle together, looking for purchase on the other. Kyle's just a few inches shorter and about thirty pounds lighter. "You pushed me into the water! I bet all the sunscreen washed off."

"It's fast-drying!" Kyle shouts back. He hooks an ankle around Stan's foot underwater, which makes Stan slip. He rights himself before he falls. Kyle takes that opportunity to swim around to Stan's other side and grab him around the neck, pulling him back. "Got you," he says, talking into Stan's ear, and it goes straight to Stan's dick.

"You sure did," Stan says, shaking him off again. "You win."

Kyle grins fully.

Stan smiles back, and then they swim out a little farther, to where they can tread water. Stan likes swimming, likes the constant motion of it. Despite all the sunscreen, though, Kyle's cheeks look to be getting a little pink, and they'll probably have to head home soon.

"No Wendy today?" Kyle asks.

"I saw her yesterday."

"What'd you guys do?"

"We watched a movie," Stan says, and now his cheeks are growing pink, though not from the sun.

"Oh? Which one?"

" _Call Me By Your Name_." Stan's heart pounds. "Do you know it?"

"Yeah, I've seen it."

"Did you like it?"

Kyle shrugs. "It was alright," he says. "I find that guy, Timothee Chalamet, insufferable. I mean, really—his name is fucking  _Timothee Chalamet_ , it's ridiculous. And he  _knows_ he's cute, ugh."

Stan laughs awkwardly. "I thought it was sad."

"It is sad," Kyle says, more softly. "Was it Wendy's idea?"

"Yeah."

"Of course. I wonder why she made you watch it. It's not really a Stan movie."

"What is a Stan movie?" Stan smiles, already knowing the answer.

" _Terrance and Phillip: Escape from Fartacraz_."

"It's the best one!"

They swim for a while longer until Kyle starts to complain about being hungry, then they towel off on the shore and slip their shoes and shirts back on. The sun high in the sky indicates it as early afternoon, as well as Stan's phone (void of notifications except for a meme from Kenny.) They laugh at nothing, they bend and stretch their bodies, testing the joints and ligaments for their transition in to adulthood, and when they move bits of grass stick to their wet ankles.

With their towels bundled under their arms they walk to this little Mexican restaurant that used to be a gas station, a place that would be called a hole-in-the-wall in any town with a population of more than a few thousand. Stan orders enchiladas and Kyle a quesadilla, and they split a big vat of cheese dip and tortilla chips, sitting at one of the tiny tables inside with their towels slung over the backs of their chairs.

"Swimming makes me so hungry," Stan observes.

"Me too," Kyle says. He dips a chip and then holds it over the edge of the dip container, letting cheese slide off until it's acceptable to bring to his mouth. "I always eat like a pig after meets."

"Pigs don't swim."

"Some do, I think?" Kyle raises his eyebrows. "For physical therapy?"

Stan laughs, very loudly. "That's just—that's fucking funny, dude," he says. "Imagine a pig in one of those fat animal water tanks and like, it's hooves."

Kyle catches on and laughs, too. The chip he's been holding slides into the dip fully and then he curses, making Stan laugh even louder.

When they're almost done with their meal Stan gets a text from Wendy, asking him what he's up to.

_with Kyle_

_That's good_

_why do you want to hang out_

_Maybe later? My mom has a few days off work so she's decided to do an impromptu Denver shopping trip. Leaving day after tomorrow._

_ok_

"Wendy wants to hang out,"Stan announces, putting his phone on the table.

"Now?"

"Later."

Kyle shrugs. "We've been together all morning," he says.

"Yeah, but…"

"But what?"

"I don't know!" Stan tries to keep his voice down, but it draws the attention of the restaurant staff anyway. It's run by a family, an old man, his two daughters, and their husbands. One of the husbands is behind the counter now, obviously looking at Stan while trying  _not_  to make it obvious. Stan lowers his voice and leans in. "It's the last real summer."

"I know you're very concerned about climate change, but—"

"That's not what I mean." Stan sighs. "It's our last  _real_ summer, you know? Our last summer as kids. I was talking to Sparky about it last night."

"Your dog?" Kyle raises his eyebrows again and puts the tall glass of lemonade he'd been drinking from down.

"I took him on a walk yesterday." When Kyle continues to look at Stan quizzically, he continues. "And, I don't know—the type of movies you and Wendy watch, right? They're so sophisticated. You guys are so sophisticated. I'm not sophisticated."

"You're mature in other ways." Kyle swirls the straw of his drink around, the ice clinking softly against the glass. "But what does this have to do with not wanting to hang out with Wendy tonight?"

"I don't want you guys to leave me," Stan says, nearly whispering. It feels like a huge confession, and suddenly the Mexican food feels too heavy and squirmy in his stomach, sweat prickling out along his hairline.

"Oh, Stan." Kyle lets go of the straw. "We're not going to leave you. We both want to hang out with you, clearly."

"I guess." Stan leans back and rubs a hand across his face. "I'm really tired, dude. I didn't sleep well last night."

"Maybe you should nap before you see Wendy." Kyle yawns, and Stan can tell it's a real yawn, prompted by swimming in the sun followed up by a full meal and the talk of naps. When Kyle gets tired his eyelids droop, his top lashes brushing against his cheeks. He has long eyelashes, unusually dark for a redhead. Stan knows this because Wendy mentioned it once, jealously, and now Stan can't help but notice them.

"Yeah," Stan says. He pulls out his wallet at the same time Kyle does. "No, I've got this."

"You always pay." Kyle crinkles his nose again, but he puts his wallet away. He slides his sunglasses from where they'd been up on his forehead, holding back his curls, over his eyes.

Stan pays the man behind the counter for their food, embarrassing Kyle by saying  _mucho gracias_ in his three-years-of-high-school-Spanish accent. The guy smiles, though that may have been at the tip Stan included. When they leave Stan holds the door open for Kyle and places a hand on the small of his back to guide him out, unconsciously, the same thing he does with Wendy and sometimes his mother. The realization brings the squirmy feeling back, but Kyle doesn't comment on the touch.

They separate in front of their houses, making vague plans get together while Wendy's out of town. Kyle departs with a snippy comment about reading more Hawthorne and Stan rushes inside his house, going to the downstairs bathroom in case he throws up. He sits on the rim of the bathtub and feels his stomach clench. He doesn't get sick, thankfully, but his mother happens to walk by the open door and hurries to him once she sees him.

"Are you feeling alright?" she asks, placing a hand on his forehead.

"Kyle and me went to Carnitas," Stan says. His mother takes her hand away, then brushes his hair so that it's out of his eyes. "I don't think it agreed with me."

"You have such a sensitive stomach." Sharon shakes his head. "Do you want some seltzer? Or some Tums?"

Stan follows his mother into the kitchen, where she pours him a glass of seltzer and shakes two candy-colored Tums from the jumbo supply they keep on top of the fridge. Stan thinks it's a little pointless, as these are two things he easily could have done himself, but he lets her baby him.

"I heard from Shelly while you were gone." Satisfied that she's cared for Stan, Sharon has floated to the sink, where dirty dishes are soaking. The grimy water brings another small wave of nausea to Stan.

"Oh?"

"I guess she and Colton's mother got into some sort of fight—don't laugh!"

Stan stops, biting his lip. "It just sounds like her," he says.

"It's not funny! That family is so snobby." Sharon sighs, putting a handful of forks in the silverware part of the dishrack. "I  _told_ her when she went to that college, that this is how people on the east coast are."

"Kyle's family's from the east coast," Stan objects.

"Yes, honey, they are. And they moved away, didn't they?"

"Kyle doesn't want to go back, anyway," Stan says, staring into his seltzer glass. "He wants to go to school in California. Stanford."

"Well, Stanford is a good school. Have you given any more thought to college?"

"I think I'm going to go take a nap." Stan drinks the rest of his seltzer and then brings the glass to his mother, giving her a shaky smile. "Maybe I'll feel better when I wake up."

"That's a good idea. I'll make something plain for dinner." Sharon smiles back, taking the cup.

Stan does not take a nap. Instead, he looks up a list of gay movies on Google and picks one. His heart is slamming and while the seltzer and tums have taken away his physical nausea, he's feeling a sort of psychological queasiness, an uneasiness that makes the pads of his fingers and toes prick.

 _Brokeback Mountain_  completely destroys Stan. He finds himself oscillating between relating to either character—there's something about Heath Ledger's fatalistic acceptance of life and utter devotion to Jake Gyllenhaal that gets to him, but then there's something about Jake Gyllenhaal's simultaneous manic obsessions and willful ignorance that he finds himself in, too. The tragedy at the end knots his heartstrings together before pulling them out of his chest in one lump, but at the same time, it's not as life-changing as  _Call Me By Your Name._ Because while Stan  _yearns_ for  _Call Me By Your Name_ , he doesn't yearn for  _Brokeback Mountain_ ; there's no feline elegance of Timothee Chalamet's Elio in either Heath Ledger's Ennis or Jake Gyllenhaal's Jack; they're on such an equal playing field, in such a push-and-pull in terms of strength dynamics, mired in such an awful situation, that overall Stan feels saddened and disheartened, not attracted or inspired. When Netflix starts roaring at him to watch another movie, he closes out of the app and shuts his laptop off to lay in the dark.

This is perhaps the worst thing he could have done. He ruminates, much in the way that he ruminated following that first viewing of  _Call Me By Your Name_ , in that he starts to think very deeply about his own life. Again, he finds himself thinking—if he were in that situation. If he were in that situation, he would have just moved to the fucking mountain. Except he knows that he could never leave a wife and child like that; no, he'd end up in a trailer, misremembering what guy his daughter was dating, crying and running his fingers over a bloodstained shirt. Stan does not want that. He's more like Ennis, he is. He's slavishly devoted, he's more like Oliver, like Ennis—he's the one that brings somebody in, he's the one that rubs a nosebleed from the sole of the other's foot, he's the one that would keep the memories, the bloodstained shirt, perfectly preserved, turn his house into a mausoleum of a museum to his partner. And he does not want to have to do that.

He pulls his phone from where it had slid up beneath his pillow and calls Wendy.

"Hello?" she says, sounding doubtful. Stan mostly texts her.

"What are you doing right now?" Stan asks. He's breathless, as if he's been running. His heart and stomach churn, so hard that he thinks he can feel his skin move beneath the fabric of his t-shirt.

"Nothing, I'm just at home—are you okay?"

"No," Stan says, trying to slow his breath. "I don't think so. I'm really not."

"Do you want me to come over?"

"Yeah."

"What's wrong?" Stan can hear her scuffling around, preparing to leave.

"I'll tell you when I get here," Stan says. He gets up and turns the light on, then paces around his room while he's on his phone. "Or, I don't really know. I don't know."

"Stan," Wendy says. "What did you do today? Just talk to me."

"I saw Kyle. We went swimming, and then we went to Carnitas, and then I watched a movie."

"What movie?"

Stan flushes. "Look, I'll talk to you when you get here—just come to my room, okay?"

He hangs up before she can respond, hoping she won't get mad at that. He straightens a few things on his desk, needlessly. He's never made a big effort to keep his things clean when Wendy comes over.

Wendy arrives in under fifteen minutes. Stan can hear his mother greet her, sounding surprised to see her, and then she's in his doorway. She's wearing sunglasses, pushing her back just like Kyle, and a frown.

Stan leaps up from his bed as if this is a job interview and he needs to shake her hand. "I think we need to break up."

Wendy sighs. She shuts the door behind her and takes her sunglasses off, folding them on Stan's desk. "What now?"

Their break-ups tend to be infrequent but anticlimactic; they sway together in this dance of what's expected of them, dating on-and-off, having pleasant but not groundbreaking sex, making vague plans for the future but never going as far as to name their children or pick out a dream house. The opposite of the crushing love Stan has observed in his cursory introduction to gay cinema.

"That movie yesterday," Stan says. Wendy leans her hip against the side of Stan's desk and Stan sits back down on the edge of his bed. "It got me thinking."

"That's good."

"I love you, you know?" Stan looks up at her, and she nods, because that's never been the question. "I like spending time with you.  _But_ —"

"It's not enough," Wendy supplies.

"Right." Stan looks down at his hands again, his hair falling in his eyes. "I'm not, you know. In love with you."

"I understand," Wendy says. She walks and sits down on the bed beside him, taking one of his hands in both of his, just like she'd done yesterday. "I have a confession."

"What?" Stan looks at her again, cocking his head.

He expects to hear that he's been cheated on, or something similar, but instead Wendy says, "I showed you that move on purpose." She laughs, her cheeks coloring slightly. "As a test."

"A test?"

Wendy breaks eye contact, her voice light with obvious embarrassment. "I wanted to watch it, because I heard it was good. And when we went and saw Lady Bird, I noticed that Timothee Chalamet kind of looks like Kyle."

"Yeah," Stan says, still confused.

"So I thought. If Stan really is in love with Kyle, this will make him realize." She turns back to him and smiles.

Stan balks at her. He should be thinking, reacting to this, but instead her words have wiped his mind blank, left him speechless. Any work that he has made towards a conclusion slips away. He scans Wendy's face, waiting to see that this is all a joke, that they will return to their milquetoast romance and have a nice laugh about this incident, but all he finds is sincerity, her brow smooth, her mouth tracing a little smile, a hint of a blush. She pats his hand on his lap.

"I want to break up, too," she says. "I guess this was a stupid way to go about things, but you've realized, right? That you're gay?"

"I'm not gay," Stan responds immediately. He takes his hands away from her. "I don't think? I like, you know. Women. I like you."

"They liked women, too, in that movie," Wendy says, her eyebrows rising. "It's not one or the other."

"I guess I don't understand. You showed me this movie as, what? A way to see if I'm gay?"

Wendy nods. She scoots back on the bed and brings a leg up, bending her knee on the blankets. "Yes," she says, "I did. And it worked, right?"

Stan sighs. "I watched Brokeback Mountain today," he announces glumly.

Wendy nods overenthusiastically. "That's good! Did you like it?"

"No. I hate these movies. They're all so sad." He looks towards the window; he drew the shades to darken the room earlier, but he knows that if they were open, he would see Kyle's house, standing as silent and stalwart as always. "I don't like that."

"Well, that's been the reality for a lot of gay men." Stan can hear Wendy climbing up on one of her political soapboxes, but she seems to stop herself. "A lot of art is sad. That doesn't mean real life has to be, too. Stan—you're looking at Kyle's house right now." He whips his head around, and she's still smiling, though now a little sadly. "I know you," she says, her voice soft. "I know you very well."

"How are you okay with this?" Stan asks, resisting the urge to look back towards the window.

"Who said I was okay?"

"You seem okay, and—we had sex, after the movie." Stan lowers his voice, wondering absently if his parents were eavesdropping on them. He doubts it.

"I felt that was important for your personal development," Wendy says briskly, and Stan can hear that she's rehearsed this part. "And—I can make my own decisions about sex."

Stan shakes his head, feeling his hair slide against his ears and forehead—he really needs a haircut, is perhaps the most tangible and sensible thing that's come out of these past two days—as if he can free up enough space to make sense of any of this. "I don't understand how you can be so—blasé," he says.

"That's a Kyle word." Wendy nods towards the closed window.

"I'm not—what do you want? Me to go run over there and declare love?"

"Is that what you want?" Wendy raises her eyebrows as if she knows the answer.

"Do you think he likes me back?"

"Stan." Wendy drops her voice, and Stan can tell he's annoyed her. "Are you kidding me?"

"He's never been interested in anybody," Stan says, flipping through memories quickly. "Not since elementary school. He likes, you know. Books, and things."

Wendy breathes out through her nose measuredly, another thing she does when Stan irritates her. He does that a lot; it's been a reason they've broken up in his past, his tendency to mishandle things as if he were a three-hundred-pound wrestler trying to perform heart surgery on a kitten. "Because he loves  _you_ ," she says. "He's devoted to  _you_."

"How do you know that?" Stan is not being obtuse. He really, truly, does not know, too overwhelmed to try and find specific instances. Kyle enjoys their time together, sure, but they're  _best friends_ —it would be weird if he didn't. He also fails to realize that he's asking his ex-girlfriend of all of three minutes for relationship advice, but he and Wendy have always been like this, amicable and getting along easily. It's what he thought he liked about their relationship, how little thought he needed to give it.

"Kyle and I have a lot in common," Wendy says, and she still sounds annoyed, but Stan knows she's annoyed by that particular fact and not by him. She normally won't admit her similarity to Kyle, though Stan believes it, too. "I know what it's like to love you. Look—just go talk to him, alright?" She smiles at him and rises from the bed, going to collect her sunglasses. Stan realizes she's been wearing shoes this entire time, sandals. Before she leaves, standing in front of an open door, she speaks again. "I've really enjoyed our time together, and I hope we can still be friends. I mean it."

"Okay," Stan says. She leaves, and she leaves the door open when she goes. Stan gets the hint.

He hears his mother asking Wendy if she's staying for dinner, and hears Wendy declining. His mother calls him down a few moments later, Stan still sitting on the bed, looking at the closed curtains, knowing what stands behind them so well that they do nothing, really, to block the view.

As promised, Sharon serves him a plain dinner, chicken and barely seasoned brown rice. His father comes in from a post-work shower, carrying a beer. Stan pokes at his food.

"Are you feeling better, hon?" Sharon asks him.

"Yeah," Stan says.

"What was wrong?" Randy asks.

"He had a stomachache," his mother says. "He and Kyle went to Carnitas. I don't trust that place."

Randy shrugs. "I like 'em," he says. "Good food."

Turning back to Stan, his mother asks, "Why did Wendy leave so soon?"

"We broke up," Stan says, staring at his plate. He's mostly cut up his food and rearranged it on his plate.

Both his parents make exclamations of surprise.

"It's alright, though!" Stan looks up at them, trying to reassure them. "It's for the best. I'm not upset."

"Oh, Stan." Sharon shakes her head. "You've had quite the day, haven't you?"

"I'm gonna go see Kyle after dinner," Stan says, not realizing that these are his plans until he says it.

"That's good." Randy nods. "Do you want to bring some beer?"

"Randy!" Sharon looks at him.

"What?" Randy knocks his head back. "He just broke up with his girlfriend, what's wrong with having a beer with his buddy?"

Stan forces himself to eat half his plate as quickly as he can, citing his previous stomachache as an excuse. He realizes, walking to the door, that nobody besides him will take Sparky on an evening walk. He double backs and finds the dog, sleeping in his usual spot beside the stairs. "We'll go to the park tomorrow," Stan promises Sparky as he pets him. "Thanks, Sparky. You're a good boy."

Anxiety and a sense of ending follow Stan on the very short walk to the Broflosvski household, a walk he had made, he remembers, not that much earlier in the day. It's some combination of a sense of finality regarding Wendy and a fear that his dog will die while he's gone. The latter is ridiculous, his parting words unindicative of any grand ending, but he nearly doubles back to take Sparky on his evening walk. He realizes, as he raises his fist to knock on the Broflovski's front door, that he's trying to avoid this confrontation with Kyle. This confrontation Wendy guided—or rather, pushed—him towards. Completely unthinkingly, Stan went when she asked him to; he comes when Kyle calls. As children, when they would play their little fantasy game, he was always liege to Kyle's king, carrying out his orders.

If Kyle rejects him, Stan will go. If Stan goes, he does not know to where he will go.

Ike answers the door. When he sees Stan, his eyes narrow and mouth opens. He looks like a pre-schooler about to burst into a crying peel, which is also how he lives in Stan's imagination. "You went swimming  _and_ you went to Carnitas without me!"

Stan blinks at him. "What?"

"I could smell it on Kyle when he came back. You guys are lucky I didn't tell Mom—I have blackmail forever now."

"Yeah, cool, whatever." Ike is eleven years old and short, Stan easily able to shoulder his way past him and into the house. He checks the kitchen and does not find Kyle there, and since he's not in the living room, either, Stan continues up the stairs to Kyle's room. He enters without notice.

"Ike—" Kyle starts, sitting at his desk with his back to the door, but he stops when he turns around and sees Stan. A white screen with black text is open behind him, nondescript. "Oh, hi, Stan. What's up? I thought you were supposed to be with Wendy."

"We broke up," Stan announces. He shuts the door behind him.

"Oh no."

"Don't sound so heartbroken." Stan smiles. Alone in this room, which he has been alone in many, many times, Stan has no idea what to do or what to say. The four walls feel claustrophobic, too small, too personal, like a little spaceship carrying them through the galaxy. Removed from time and space. Kyle is the same Kyle as ever, sitting there in his athletic shorts and swim team hoodie, low white socks on his feet. Stan stares at the few wisps of hair around his ankles, where he's missed while shaving them for easier movement in the water.

"Are you okay?" Stan's still looking at Kyle's ankles as Kyle stands up and walks to him. He moves his arms in funny little raises, as if he thinks he should be consoling Stan but doesn't know how.

"We broke up," Stan says, taking a deep breath, "because of the movie."

" _Call Me By Your Name_?" Kyle laughs a little.

"Yeah. She showed it to me as a test."

"A test of what?"

Stan holds Kyle's gaze. "I think I'm gay, dude."

Kyle blinks a few times, long eyelashes sweeping across his cheeks, and then he bursts out laughing. Stan waits for him to stop. "I'm sorry,  _what_?" Kyle asks eventually, hiccupping the words out.

"That actor—he looks like you," Stan says. He can feel heat collecting in his face, his ears. "And I was watching it, and I was getting so mad, because he wasn't being treated right. It was too sad. Then I watched  _Brokeback Mountain_ , and that was too sad, too. What I'm saying, is—why are all these movies so  _sad_? No, that's not what I'm saying. I look at your eyelashes all the time. Because Wendy told me they were nice, once, and now I feel like all I see is your eyelashes."

Kyle laughs again, though this time it's a little wet, a little soft. "Excuse me for not following this," he says. "My eyelashes?"

"Will you kiss me?" Stan says, almost certain he will explode, an aneurysm of the entire body, the way everything seems to be heating up and hammering so hard. "So I can see? Make sure?"

"Is this a joke?" Kyle rubs a hand against one eye.

"No, it's not a joke!" Stan's heart thuds to a stop, everything that was seconds ago hot now cold. "Of course it's not a joke, why would I joke about something like this?"

"Because—obviously I want to kiss you, Stan!" Kyle turns from him, balling his fists at his side. "Don't you see how pathetic I am, hovering around you all the time, taking any chance I can to touch you? Between you fucking Wendy, or whatever, here I am? Obviously, clearly, I'll let you kiss me so you can see you're not gay and you're just—I don't know, confused."

"Kyle, please," Stan says. Any uncertainty has vanished, and all he knows is that he wants, genuinely, to kiss him, to soothe him from this state. The idea that he has suffered over Stan is even more unbearable than watching Elio suffer over Oliver, Jack and Ennis suffer over one another. "Turn around."

Kyle bows his head. Stan can see that his fists are balled so hard they're shaking.

Stan puts his hands on Kyle's shoulders, thinking of how he'd done this just earlier today, tussling in the lake. He swivels Kyle around, keeping his hold on those shoulders—those perfect shoulders, so snug under Stan's grip, the slope as beautiful as any distant blue-capped mountain ridge. He holds his eyes with his own for just a second, pushing aside the unease in his stomach, his chest, the physical sign of his nervousness, the feeling that he is about to explode, as he kisses Kyle.

Stan fails to experience any kind of fireworks, unless the sensation of his stomach flipping over and over again counts. Still, he recognizes and responds to the kiss, moving his hands so he can hold Kyle around the waist and press him into his chest. Kyle tastes like toothpaste, always so careful to care for his teeth since suffering through braces for years longer than all the other boys, facing complications and mouth surgeries that ruined summers. Stan remembers those summers, and all the other summers Kyle spent miserable and sick, and he remembers this same room, the low hum of a fan as he and Kyle would lay in Kyle's sick bed together, white socks and hoodies, flipping through comic books and watching movies on Kyle's laptop. Kissing Kyle feels like that, Stan realizes. If this room is a tiny spaceship, he and Kyle are astronauts. Kyle tastes like toothpaste and he smells like chlorine and he feels like taut golden thread and, altogether, every physical sense points to an invisible, but just as real, sense of home, of truth, of justice, of rightness and of wholeness.

Kyle moans when Stan opens his mouth and slides his tongue against his; he responds in like, for just a few seconds, until he pulls back. He steps out of Stan's grip, but Stan grabs him before he can turn around again, keeping an arm around his shoulders.

"I love you," Stan says.

"Stan." A truncated laugh, but mostly Kyle's voice just shakes. "Stan, please, I—"

"I love you," Stan repeats. He puts his other arm around Kyle's again and brings him to his chest, resting his cheek against Kyle's forehead. Just a few inches, just thirty pounds. "I love you so much, and I love you in this way, I think."

Kyle nuzzles into Stan's touch, though he might just be shaking his head. Stan can't tell. "I don't know what to say."

"That's a first."

"You dickwad!" Kyle hits Stan on the back, open-palmed, and Stan smiles hard. Cinematic parallelism. Stan might be starting to understand art, after all.

Years and years later, Kyle accompanies Stan on his summer research trip to Italy. He's writing his dissertation on Donatello's homosexuality and how that reflects in his art; the actual topic, of course, is more detailed and nuanced, but this is how he explains it to people. They listen politely and nod when Stan talks about his work. He still finds it awkward, phrasing his thoughts and opinions on art, not because he's unsure of them but because he doesn't want to come off as pompous or a know-it-all. To Stan, it's less about a grand solution and more like acting as a student, ready to learn and more than that, to be taught. He's good at that.

Stan and Kyle stay at a funded  _pensione_  and every morning Stan throws the curtains in their small room open, absorbing in the view. It's of a sliver of the street and the backside of a bunch of buildings, but it's Italy, and Stan cried the first time he saw this unremarkable view _._ Even weeks and weeks into the research trip, when things should start to become mundane, he finds himself resistant to any sense of routine. He has his routine, sure, his favorite places to eat and to sit and stare off into the distance, his preferred methods of transportation and his favorite niches in which to kiss Kyle, but something magic lingers. Sometimes Stan thinks he can see it, whatever it might be, shimmering in the air.

Kyle flounders around, complaining openly about the conventions of coffee in this country, trying to learn Italian in a class consisting mostly of white college girls in their twenties with whom Kyle commiserates about the 's not  _Call Me By Your Name_ ; it's nothing like that, remotely. Stan's research includes a lot of shuffling of manuscripts and standing in front of statues, staring at them and begging them to tell Stan something they have failed to tell anybody else in half a millennium. But every day, Stan returns home to the tiny room with the awful view in the  _pensione_ , he closes the curtains, and turns around to see Kyle on the bed, lounging with a book, ready to tell Stan if it's a slog or a masterpiece, ready to receive Stan's kisses. Each night he pulls Kyle's feet into his lap and rubs the soles. He counts his eyelashes and he pets his hair. As routine and mundane as it may be, Stan never tires of it, never at all.


End file.
